Ships
- USS Hughes (DD-410) Captain from 21 September 1939
Donald J. Ramsay was born in Methuen, Massachusetts, on 10 January 1903. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1924. His early sea duty included the cruiser Raleigh and the patrol craft Eagle 35, and he trained with torpedoes at the Naval Torpedo Station on Goat Island in Narragansett Bay. He also completed the Naval War College correspondence course in international law. In 1931 he returned to Annapolis as an instructor in mathematics and ordnance.
In 1936 Ramsay was assigned to the Office of the Judge Advocate General and began law school at George Washington University. He received his law degree in 1939 and was promoted to lieutenant commander on 1 July of that year. On 21 September 1939 he took command of the new Sims-class destroyer Hughes (DD-410) when she was commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard. Bath Iron Works had launched her that June.
Hughes completed shakedown in the Gulf of Mexico and joined the Atlantic Fleet. From July 1940 through December 1941 Ramsay kept her on the Atlantic work of the prewar Navy, first on patrol off Martinique watching the Vichy French forces there, then on Neutrality Patrol off Iceland. In that period Hughes became the first American destroyer to escort a British convoy all the way to England.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor the destroyer was ordered to the Pacific. She sailed from Norfolk on 18 December 1941 and reached San Diego on 30 December in company with the carrier Yorktown. On 12 January 1942 she left San Diego screening ships that carried reinforcements to Samoa, then joined the striking force built around Yorktown. Under Ramsay she screened carrier attacks on Jaluit, Makin, Mili, and the Canton Islands, and on 10 March 1942 she screened the combined Lexington and Yorktown force in the strike on Lae and Salamaua. During the Battle of the Coral Sea, Hughes was escorting a tanker bound for Nouméa. She reached Pearl Harbor in time for Midway.
At Midway, Hughes screened Yorktown. The destroyer shot down two Japanese torpedo planes and helped shoot down two more. After the carrier was hit and abandoned, Ramsay kept Hughes alongside the crippled ship, and the destroyer was still with her when Yorktown sank on 7 June 1942.
Ramsay was promoted to temporary commander on 17 July 1942. Still in Hughes, he received the Silver Star for action against Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands from 7 to 15 September 1942, during the Guadalcanal campaign. On 26 October, north of the Santa Cruz Islands, bombs and torpedoes left the carrier Hornet on fire and heavily listed. Ramsay brought Hughes alongside and put the destroyer’s hoses and men to work on the carrier’s fires. Further air attacks drove him off, and he returned more than once to continue the help. He then maneuvered near the stricken ship and took off survivors. For that day he was awarded the Navy Cross.
He left Hughes on 23 December 1942. Promoted to temporary captain on 1 June 1943, he served through 1945 in Washington as legislative counsel and as liaison officer with Congress and other government departments. He returned to sea in 1945 and commanded the light cruiser San Diego and the heavy cruiser Pensacola, and he took part in the atomic-bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. From 1946 to 1947 he was assistant general inspector of the Atlantic Fleet. Ramsay retired in 1947 as a rear admiral. A resident of Newport, Rhode Island, he died on 25 February 1968 at the age of 65.